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Saturday, February 02, 2013

A TWO-point night -- Game 8: Capitals 3 - Flyers 2

The beer is colder, and the night air crisper after a win, isn’t it?

And so they were for the Washington Capitals and their fans last night
as the home team broke a two-game losing streak and posted their second
straight home win with a 3-2 win over the Philadelphia Flyers.

The game started like a Caps-Flyers game, the teams trading territory,
attitude, and penalties (if not goals) in the first 20 minutes.The key moment came late in the period.Nicklas Backstrom sent a pass from the right
point to John Erskine manning the left side.The puck eluded Erskine, which gave Flyer Wayne Simmonds an opportunity
to pounce on a loose puck.Erskine
stepped up to try and poke the puck in deep, but as he was about to do so
Simmonds arrived.

Here was one of those moments that one can dissect frame-by-frame for
hours afterward, but in the moment you have two players – one instinctively
knows that the play can go the other way and present a scoring opportunity for
the other team, the other player sees that opportunity and focuses only on the
puck.Erskine was poking at the puck
with his left arm, but while doing so he brought his right elbow up.Simmonds was trying to poke the puck past Erskine
to effect what could be a breakaway in the other direction, but while doing so
could not see the elbow now aimed at his face.

Erskine elbowed Simmonds in the head.The video is clear on this.Simmonds went to the ice bleeding, but no penalty was called.It matters not.One would think it a betting certainty that Erskine
is going to be getting a call from the league and that Brendan Shanahan is
going to be making a video to announce a suspension.It is merited.We do not necessarily agree with the
Philadelphia game announcers, who seemed to think the elbow was
intentional.We think Erskine had the
intention of impeding Simmonds attempt to get to the puck, and his elbow became
the instrument of that action; that is different from saying he intentionally
elbowed Simmonds, but that will not matter in the case of how to deal with this
incident.If we had to wager, we would
guess Erskine will get three games, courtesy of the Department of Player
Safety.

After all that (including the ensuing fight between Matt Hendricks and
Zac Rinaldo) the clubs went to the locker room scoreless after 20 minutes.The second period, while less eventful from a
physical point of view, was just as silent on the matter of scoring until eight
minutes had passed.The Caps got caught
in two ways on the play.First, Karl
Alzner got tangled up with Tye McGinn behind the Caps’ net.When Danny Briere joined in, the Flyers had
advantages of numbers on the puck.

Meanwhile, Mike Green and goalie Braden Holtby both were peeking at
what was going on behind the net.This
gave Bruno Gervais an opportunity to find a soft spot behind Green, and when
Briere slid the puck out from behind the net, Gervais had a tap in to open the
scoring.But rewind a moment and look at
the play just before the puck came out to Gervais…

(screen capture from NHL.com/Comcast)

Gervais, the goal scorer, is circled.He jumped in all the way from the right point, tapping his stick
frantically in a call for the puck.Where
is the back-side support coming from on defense?That’s the Ribeiro-Ovechkin-Wolski line
getting a good view of the play.

The Flyers returned the favor six minutes later.And this is the kind of thing that happens in
the blink of an eye that is one of the priceless ironies in sports.Sean Couturier was carrying the puck through
the neutral zone and was approaching the Capitals’ blue line with the Caps’ John
Carlson in his path. Here they were, the two players in the league who led all
in goals scored against while on ice.Something was bound to happen.It
did.Couturier lost control of the puck
ahead of him, and his timing could not have been worse.Carlson was there to take advantage of the
play just as the Flyers were changing out players and as Jay Beagle was coming
off the ice in favor of Nicklas Backstrom for the Caps.Carlson saw the change and flipped the puck
into open space where Backstrom was the only one back to get it.Backstrom had nothing but clear ice in front
of him, and he finished the play by roofing a backhand over goalie Ilya
Bryzgalov to tie the game.

The Caps jumped on the Flyers in the third period with a pair of goals,
the first of which came on a play one would normally have associated with an Alex
Ovechkin finish.The play, though, was the
product as much of Mike Green as of the goal scorer -- Troy Brouwer.Green received the puck from Backstrom at the right point, where he
spied Brouwer lurking in the left wing circle (after being plastered into the glass
only moments before).Green sent a
long pass through the middle and all the way to Brouwer, who was wide
open at the bottom of the left wing circle.Brouwer had time to pick a hole, and he did, wristing the puck over
Bryzgalov’s right shoulder on the short side to give the Caps the lead.

Wojtek Wolski scored what would be the game winner almost three minutes
later.It was a simple enough and, for
the Flyers, a boneheaded enough play.The
faceoff was outside the Caps’ zone, Mike Ribeiro and Claude Giroux facing one another.Giroux won the draw back to defenseman Luke
Schenn, who promptly lost the puck in his skates.Wolski, who by this time skated around Danny
Briere, poked the puck out from under Schenn’s skates and jumped past the
flat-footed Flyer.It was his turn to
have nothing but clear ice in front of him, and he made good use of the
opportunity, backhanding the puck through Bryzgalov to give the Caps some
insurance.

The insurance came in handy when Brayden Schenn (“relation,” says Joe
Beninati) scored just past the halfway point of the period, but that was as
close as the Flyers would get as the Caps broke the third period spell and
skated off a 3-2 winner.

Other stuff…

-- The Caps slammed the door after the Schenn goal that brought it to
3-2.The Flyers had only one more shot
on goal in the last 9:30.

--Alex Ovechkin has been in a
slump.This is not news to anyone.Against the Flyers, though, he had far more
jump in his game.He finished without a
point, but he had seven shots (12 attempts), a hit, and a blocked shot in 22
minutes.If he has five games like this,
he probably has points in four of them.

-- Chemistry is funny.Mike
Ribeiro and Alex Ovechkin did not appear to have it, at least early last
night.But sometimes a chemical reaction
needs a catalyst.Wojtek Wolski was
that, at least last night.This line
should stay intact for a few games to see what unfolds.

--Claude Giroux took 31 of the
game’s 69 faceoffs (winning 20).He was
scraping his stick back on draws so often it almost looked like he was raking
leaves out there.

-- Nicklas Backstrom looked like “Nicklas Backstrom,” at last. In 22
minutes and change he was 1-1-2, plus-2, had five shots on goal (as many as he
recorded in the previous five games combined and the most he had in a regular
season game since recording seven in a 2-0 win over Montreal on March 26, 2011),
two takeaways, two blocked shots, and 10 wins in 19 faceoffs.

-- A bit lost in this effort was the solid effort by Braden
Holtby.He could not be faulted on
either goal.He might have benefitted
from a bit better defense on the first one, and on the second Flyer goal, Matt
Read’s initial shot hit both the crossbar and the far post before it dropped
right at Brayden Schenn’s feet for the tap-in.

-- Boy I wish the Caps would be better at offensive zone draws.They were 8-for-24 in this one.

-- John Carlson almost escaped without being on ice for a goal against
(he and Couturier are still tied for the league lead, with Tobias Enstrom of
Winnipeg), but he was on for the Schenn goal.He did have five blocked shots, though, and looked stronger in his own
end than in most games to date.

-- In the revolving door of “prospect center,” it was Marcus Johansson
on ice (Mathieu Perreault had a seat).In almost 18 minutes Johansson had no points, one shot attempt
(blocked), a takeaway, a blocked shot, and he won two of three draws.A bit of a “meh” night.

In the end, you can’t win three before you win two.That’s a way of saying that the Caps are in a
position where they have to take these things game by game.They played a good game. However, that needs to be
tempered by the realization the uniforms might have been orange and black, but
these Flyers aren’t playing like “The Flyers.”Still, two points is two points, and it is the Caps who earned them,
pushing the Flyers to the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings and
crawling to within three points of the top-eight.

One of those teams three points ahead of them (pending their game this
afternoon against New Jersey) is their next opponent, the Pittsburgh
Penguins.The Caps are halfway to a
pleasant winter weekend.We will see if
they can build on this.

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The Washington Capitals ended the 2016-2017 as one of 12 franchises in the NHL never to win a Stanley Cup. Of that group, only the St. Louis Blues (48 seasons), Buffalo Sabres (45 seasons), and Vancouver Canucks (45 seasons) have gone longer never having won a Cup than the Capitals (41 seasons). Six teams came into the league after the Capitals entered the league in 1974-1975 and have won Stanley Cups: Colorado Rockies/New Jersey Devils (1976-1977), Edmonton Oilers (1979-1980), Quebec Nordiques/Colorado Avalanche (1979-1980), Hartford Whalers/Carolina Hurricanes (1979-1980), Tampa Bay Lightning (1992-1993), and the Anaheim Ducks (1993-1994).

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